Monthly Archives: August 2018

Dead end

There’s that one that you’ve seen,
passing by gauzy curtains at night.
By chance, a sidelong glance.
A stooped shadow,
seeming to peer back at passing cars.
His round shoulders, sloped by time.
On clockwork, as ever,
There he is, still.
Each night, as you make your way to wintry home.

In wonderment, you muse:
Does he, perhaps, scratch bundles of five on his wall,
as at Shawshank?
Is there another, moldering in a deadened back room?
Or does he wait
for a knock,
thinking to trade hot tea and a biscuit
for someone who will listen?

18. A dream of subjugation

I stand, looking out,
on the highest rampart of the cantilevered castle.
All of the Members stand with me today, deck upon deck,
in honour of this coronation.
The crescent walls jut out below me, each further than the last.
They hold our numbers of today,
ten thousand and one.
I am filled with terrible power and intent.
My robe of eagle feathers encircles me.
All other Members are clothed as lesser birds,
and they remain still, heads bowed.
The crown is of the eagle’s head,
hooked beak and eyes of adamant.
It is set upon me in that moment of stillness.
I raise vast pinions and give a cry.
The lesser birds follow.
In the ten thousand, there are those who would not.
They are bound onto crosses of wood, set alight,
and cast into unfathomable mist.
Now is the time. The time is now.

Impossible

I learned in high school math
That it could be proven, with numbers,
that motion is impossible.
It was called Zeno’s Paradox.

It went something like this:
A man running to catch the bus at a certain time
would first have to run half the distance,
then half of the remaining distance,
and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.
He would never get there.

Some days, I am that runner.
Knowing there is a “bus” to catch,
Every day, every day, ad infinitum.
But I am tired, and sad, and poor in spirit.

The stodgy determined part of me
is a little sick,
but, like a voice crying in the wilderness,
it says I must refute Zeno.
His paradox was meaningless numbers
that could be proven wrong, just as easily.
And, as everyone knows, motion is a fact of life.

I lie in my bed, in the late morning,
and say to the now distant voice:
See?  I have already done the impossible!
Each day I move, I do, I rest, I do again.

Ah! Do you! ( It says back.)
Try!  Try now!
I say I must rest for a little first….
there is chuckling.
Then, there is something like paralysis of the will.
I want to weep from frustration,
but I must rest for a little, first.

Somehow, I get the upper hand in this wrestle.
Shuffle to the shower, start to shave.
What for? (I think, or hear).  I stop halfway.
The sourness of doubt slinks back.
If I could just rest for a little bit first.

Coming back to myself, I am somehow in robotic mode.
Finish the shave, get dressed, carry the laundry downstairs.
Back upstairs I go with the load from the dryer.
Stopped halfway in a spiral of hopelessness.
The Runner.  The Runner.  This is impossible.
If I could just rest for a little bit first.

Zeno has won today.

 

String theory

Ah, child of the dust,
how shall I tell you?
Come, please, and play my strings.
For I am mute.  Absolute.
I want to be heard,
but the weight is the word.

Please, sit.
Rest.
Bring your patience.
Inspect.
See.
Care.
Is there not some residual worth?

And now, you must tune.

Though you know me not,
in weary sighs I will tell you how…

The two highest are of a single strand.
They can speak beauty, poignant and piercing,
played with a bow.

The two that are next are of wire finely wound.
They speak of wisdom gained, lessons learned,
kindnesses felt and given.

The two that are last are more heavily coiled.
for they bear the most weight.
They speak of things sad, and of guilt and betrayal,
of regret, and of harrowing penance.
Pluck them slowly, with soft fingerpads.

If any should break at the peg,
stay and warm me.
Let the sting subside.
Rid me of the useless member.
Play me again, with your love,
and know that, now, it matters not.

 

 

And in the Winter, extra blankets for the cold, fix the heater (getting old)

We had a sliding patio door of glass.
February frozen.
Final, ’til the spring.
A poor insulator,
it grew small spires of frost, even inside.
Like so many iron filings
straining to a magnet, only white.
Quarter inch runnels of ice said we were locked in, for now.
I stand in pajamas.
Run fingernails down,
bunching cold cakes of whiteness under each.
A throwback to my ten year old self,
I make a squeaky wipe on the fogged glass,
and peer into the next dimension.
Minus thirty says the little red thermometer,
as a tiny grey-brown visitor swoops in and lands on the windswept stones.
How can these wee birds, with toes smaller than a pencil lead,
not freeze in an instant?
So thin, so small, nothing to eat.
I run and get bread, and the hair dryer.
Thaw the frosty door, pull it open with a groan.
Scare little buddy away, but I toss the bread anyway.
I think he went to tell the others.
In five minutes, it’s party time.

Nobody home

It’s like a boogeyman tale from when we were kids. I’ve been in this town for thirty years, and do quite a bit of walking. I suppose I could say I have been by her door more than five hundred times.

Reputedly, the spinster (or widow, depending on which story you believe) either inherited, or was born, in this house. Back in its day, it may have been reasonably fashionable, but from my picture you can see it has fallen into decay. There have never been any men, at least none that anyone knows of or will talk about. I personally do not even know how she survives or gets her supplies, and it’s a subject that few want to talk about.

Some of the vile things I have heard I will credit to the overactive imaginations of adolescents. Freezers in the basement, full of who knows what, or who. An overabundance of felines, whose population reputedly has dwindled with the last few years. Pungent cooking smells coming from the place. Ashes and tiny bone fragments in the back garden. All my eyes have seen, and can confirm, are the broken windows, mossy carpets on the outside of the place, weeks and weeks of newspapers which accumulate until some good Samaritan collects them, and, yes, on a handful of occasions, the specter herself (or so I suppose).

My own imagination is overactive at times, and I am something of a romantic bookworm, and so I will say that the pale, grassy-haired figure with sunken eyes vies for comparison between two literary figures of old: The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw scrabbling at the dark window in Wuthering Heights, and the cobwebbed Miss Havisham
from Great Expectations. She appears at odd times peeking through moth eaten drapes of lace, never in full view, and quickly withdrawing once she has seen what she has needed to see. Uncomfortably, it has been me on a few occasions.

I have not met a single soul who has ever spoken to her, or seen her out of doors. As for me, I am divided between a sense of dread and one of exciting mystery, and have more than once considered plucking up the courage to rap on her door.

Do wish me luck, reader, for, if this gets the best of me, I may come to know more about Miss Earnshaw-Havisham than is good for me.

Perhaps the newspapers will begin to pile up in front of MY door.

Coffee thoughts

my eyes were growing furry coats
i peered through layered lashes
and thought i saw some billy goats
with peppery moustaches

from out my mouth came rabbit teeth
just like my younger sister’s
and to the South (just underneath)
some honorary whiskers

my nose was flat and wiggly
i snuffled in the dirt
just like that little piggly
emblazoned on my shirt

but, now it’s time to say goodbye
to wooly-minded thoughts
and think, instead, of pumpkin pie
and bubbling coffee pots!